VIDEO: Q&A WITH GARY ANDERSEN
One of Andersen���s earliest mentors was a former Wisconsin assistant coach, Ron McBride,
who coached the offensive line for the late Dave
McClain in the early ���80s.
McBride recruited Andersen out of Ricks College (now BYU-Idaho in Rexburg), groomed him
as a center at Utah when he was his position coach
and later mentored him as a member of his staff.
���There are a lot of things that I believe in,������ Andersen said, ���and the number one key in coaching
is that I always talk about taking care of the kids
first.
���I believe that as a head coach, and anybody���s
who���s ever going to work for me is going to put the
kids first. That was Mac���s deal. That was important to him.������
On Tuesday, Andersen began calling his Utah
State players, one by one.
���I couldn���t tell them yet that I had taken the job,������
he said. ���But I told them if I was offered the job I
was going to take the job. There were a bunch of
tears and hard conversations.������
Since Utah State was on holiday break, most of
the players didn���t return to the Logan campus af26 �� VARSITY
D EC E M B E R 20, 2012
ter the bowl game. So there was no opportunity for
Andersen to address his status at a team meeting.
His biggest concern was ���they���re going to learn
about it through ESPN.������
Although it was out of his control at that point,
he didn���t want them to hear it that way.
���So I reached out to them ��� 107 times,������ he said
of his individual calls to each player on the roster.
���Probably seven or eight, I got their voicemail and
I haven���t gotten a hold of them yet.������
Obviously, it would have been easier to send out
a text message to the group.
���But I just couldn���t do that,������ Andersen said. ���So I
picked up the phone and started calling them one
at a time. The kids were awesome, too.������
They were understandably unhappy to hear the
news that he was going to Wisconsin.
���But almost everyone said, ���Coach, we understand,��������� he recounted.
In late November, Andersen was linked to job
openings at Cal, Kentucky and Colorado.
At the time, he expressed publicly that he had
no intention of leaving Utah State in the context
that he loved coaching and living In Logan, and he
